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Long regarded as one of the premier Spanish modernists, Federico García Lorca's newly revised Collected Poems is a welcome contribution to this outstanding poet's prolific body of work. This bilingual edition includes many recently discovered poems and revised translations, updating the completeness of the verse produced by Lorca during his short life (he died at 38). Lorca's poetry is quirky, playful, not only filled with orange groves and olive trees, but a strange, physical world where a river has "garnet whiskers" or there exists a "recumbent sky" or "mummified ocean." Lorca wrote love poems, though we can never be sure what exactly is desired. His poetry isn't abstract, but the images are sometimes a bit out of reach--if anything, he tried to give the abstract a physical presence. For example, a lovers' exchange is given dimension in "The Poet Tells the Truth": "Let the skein never end / of I love you you love me, ever burnt / with decrepit sun and old moon." What Lorca wrote of a friend gored by a bull in "Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías" seems applicable to his poetry generally: "I sing of his elegance in words that moan / and I remember a sad breeze in the olive grove." Collected Poems is an important addition to any poetry collection, especially for those unfamiliar with Lorca or those who wish to read the poems in their original Spanish. --Michael Ferch Book Description

Customer Reviews (7)

Great poems, adequate translation
Garcia Lorca's poems are beautiful in Spanish.The translations in English seem a little heavy or awkward.But, in Spanish, they're lovely.

Spanish made easy
I don't know if this is the best way to work on learning Spanish, but it's certainly one of the least painful.It's great to have the original Spanish and the English translation opposite each other.I can't think of a better way to work on your pronunciation than to read these poems out loud to yourself [or others if they're interested].The musical sound of the poetry makes you love the language and want to learn it.Maybe someday I finally will.In the meantime just reading and speaking it is it's own reward.

Poetry of Lorca is superb!
I usually find most modern poetry boring. Not Lorca's.His poems are short but potent and piercing, full of vivid imagery. His Spanish is difficult to translate literally into English while still retaining vibrancy, but this translator did a good job.The Spanish poetry is presented on the left-hand pages and its English version on the right-hand pages for easy comparison. Not a literal translation by any means, but a very effective one. A strong recommend.

The Collected Poems: A Bilingual Edition
Frederico Garcia Lorca is wonderful as always.This gives my granddaughters who know some Spanish and my friends who do not speak an opportunity to read and enjoy him.

Beautiful, magical
Lorca was such an amazing poet and this book captures him in all his dynamic beauty and magic. The translations are wonderful and its bilingual and the selection vast. If you like poetry, get this book. ... Read more

Book Description
A reissue of a landmark poetry volume with a new introduction by Pulitzer Prize winner W. S. Merwin. Bilingual.

The Selected Poems of Federico García Lorca has introduced generations of American readers to mesmerizing poetry since 1955. Lorca (1898-1937) is admired all over the world for the lyricism, immediacy and clarity of his poetry, as well as for his ability to encompass techniques of the symbolist movement with deeper psychological shadings. But Lorca's poems are, most of all, admired for their beauty. Undercurrents of his major influences—Spanish folk traditions from his native Andalusia and Granada, gypsy ballads, and his friends the surrealists Salvador Dali and Luis Buñuel—stream throughout Lorca's work. Poets represented here as translators are as diverse as Stephen Spender, Langston Hughes, Ben Belitt, William Jay Smith, and W.S. Merwin. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Good, loud poems
My husband used to read me this book when I was pregnant with my only child. The sound of the poems made her kick. Maybe the poems, but probably it was just the way he read them--in spanish--louder than he ever said anything. My husband never yelled, even when he was angry he just stayed by himself a bit, but he really used to get into these poems. From his childhood, I guess. He tried to translate them himself, but he wasn't very good at it. He would probably say these aren't very good either, no translation is your own after all, but I don't speak spanish, and to me these are close to the way he used to make me feel when he read them. Very lovely, and a little alarming.

I tried reading them to my daughter--she's having a baby in the summer--but it didn't really make anyone feel alarmed. I guess I need to learn to develop my own versions.

A must have
This is the book that everyone who loves FGL must have. I even started to learn it in spanish. ... Read more

Book Description

Collected here in one bilingual edition are new translations of four small books of poems that were published during Federico Garcia Lorca's lifetime and span his most creative years. First Songs, poems inspired by the Andalusian countryside are comparable in style and theme to those in his masterpiece Poem of the Deep Song. This charming little book was given by Lorca to his friend Manuel Altolaguirre and his wife as a gift to their first child. Ode to Walt Whitman, a passionate meditation on homosexuality in a society that proscribes it, is perhaps the best-known book to have come out of the poet's New York Cycle of poems, a damning vision of urban life under capitalism. Perhaps Lorca's finest poem, A Flood of Tears for Ignacio Sanchez Mojis, is a moving elegy to his friend, a renowned bullfighter who was also a writer and a hero to a generation of poets. With Six Galician Poems, written in the Galician language, Lorca returns to themes of the simple life and folklore of the Spanish people. Published only a few months before the Spanish Civil War broke out, this book-a classic of Galician literature-never won the prominence it deserved.

Book Description

Customer Reviews (5)

Excellent selection, but with a few dud translations.
This volume has much to recommend it: the selections are just what you'd hope for [a nice cross-sampling of Lorca's forms, styles, voices, and developmental periods]; the introductory essay by editor Christopher Maurer is excellent, concise, and illuminating; and the translations are mostly brilliant.This is almost 5-star material.

I downgraded to 4 stars becasue several translations are too prosaic and literal for this most lyrical and oblique of poets.For example, Greg Simon and Steven White's translation of Danza de la muerte reads almost as flatly as a word-for-word transcription.The tripping rhythms and apocalyptic language of the original poem feel a bit bloodless in translation.Several of Cola Franzen's translations I think adhere too faithfully to the original structure, which doesn't work with English iambs, at least not without sacrificing music.

Of course, one cannot simply criticize a translation.At issue is an insoluble debate between faithfulness to the original in structure, diction, and sense, versus faithfulness to the original in sound, rhythm, and other musical aspects.The two faithfulnesses may be at conflict.

Anyway, this is an excellent selection, flawless except for those disappointingly flat-footed renderings.Can I propose a side-by-side-by-side format?Instead of Spanish next to a single English translation, how about Spanish next to a word-by-word, highly faithful translation, next to a more musical rendering?Sort of like this: Lorca-Simon/White-Ezra Pound?[As in his "translations" of Chinese poems?]Like I said:insoluble.

A Superb Cross-Section of Lorca's Work
The life and work of Federico Garcia Lorca tower over me - his delicate balance of exhaltation and alienation, of romanticism and cynicism, of life and death. Through the eyes of his poems, the gray skys and cold winds all around me blaze with a new vision. If I can ever do a tenth of what Lorca has done, as a writer, as a thinker, as a person trying to enjoy life, than I shall be more than satisfied.

There is a pocket in my old Swiss Backpack that perfectly fits only one book for when I am away from home. This is the book that goes in it: You could take a whole case of Lorca's works but you would always be missing something. Instead, most of my favorate poems are in here, bilingual so there is no need for anyone to complain about the translator.

The best way to experience any poet's work is through the ark of their life, over the vast ups and downs that go with any carrer. In this book, you can begin to feel that in Lorca's transitions and transformations of the mundane world into the extraordinary.

Garcia lorca doe it again
Whether you have children or not Buy this book. If you have children read them the landscape poetry in here.They will sing them in their sleep.It will take them on magical journeys to happy places and you also.

this is the one to buy
I just started browsing through a book of his poems in spanish one day and loved them, but my spanish is marginal.This has the spanish poems side by side with english translations, many of which I don't really like because they do things like switch words and lines and take a little too much freedom and change the spirit of the poem, but that's okay.You can read the spanish, read the english, and see exactly what has been changed, but the beauty is in the spanish ones, and though his vocabulary is large, yours doesn't really have to be to appreciate the sound and sight of these poems in spanish. I love many of the sonnets, plus the king of harlem, which reminds me of HCE from Finnegans Wake, this character that becomes the landscape itself, "after walking", and many others from the poet in new york.I've just been getting into some spanish poets after reading some st john of the cross and seeing what types of flows and life can be infused into words in this language, and these dark, bloody grimy oozes of language have had me high for weeks.

Great, One of the best collections of Lorca's poems
Brilliant, emotions of positive and negative are tasted in this work ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (8)

Verde Que Te Quiero Verde
Here is one of Federico Garcia-Lorca's most famous poems, in Spanish.It will give you a taste of what it is like to read him in English or Spanish:

Verde que te quiero verde*
por F. García Lorca * Friday October 24, 2003 at 09:46 PM

Romance sonámbulo*

Verde que te quiero verde.
Verde viento. Verdes ramas.
El barco sobre la mar
y el caballo en la montaña.
Con la sombra en la cintura
ella sueña en su baranda,
verde carne, pelo verde,
con ojos de fría plata.
Verde que te quiero verde.
Bajo la luna gitana,
las cosas le están mirando
y ella no puede mirarlas.
*
Verde que te quiero verde.
Grandes estrellas de escarcha,
vienen con el pez de sombra
que abre el camino del alba.
La higuera frota su viento
con la lija de sus ramas,
y el monte, gato garduño,
eriza sus pitas agrias.
¿Pero quién vendrá? ¿Y por dónde...?
Ella sigue en su baranda,
verde carne, pelo verde,
soñando en la mar amarga.
*
Compadre, quiero cambiar
mi caballo por su casa,
mi montura por su espejo,
mi cuchillo por su manta.
Compadre, vengo sangrando,
desde los montes de Cabra.
Si yo pudiera, mocito,
ese trato se cerraba.
Pero yo ya no soy yo,
ni mi casa es ya mi casa.
Compadre, quiero morir
decentemente en mi cama.
De acero, si puede ser,
con las sábanas de holanda.
¿No ves la herida que tengo
desde el pecho a la garganta?
Trescientas rosas morenas
lleva tu pechera blanca.
Tu sangre rezuma y huele
alrededor de tu faja.
Pero yo ya no soy yo,
ni mi casa es ya mi casa.
Dejadme subir al menos
hasta las altas barandas,
dejadme subir, dejadme,
hasta las verdes barandas.
Barandales de la luna
por donde retumba el agua.
*
Ya suben los dos compadres
hacia las altas barandas.
Dejando un rastro de sangre.
Dejando un rastro de lágrimas.
Temblaban en los tejados
farolillos de hojalata.
Mil panderos de cristal,
herían la madrugada.
*
Verde que te quiero verde,
verde viento, verdes ramas.
Los dos compadres subieron.
El largo viento, dejaba
en la boca un raro gusto
de hiel, de menta y de albahaca.
¡Compadre! ¿Dónde está, dime?
¿Dónde está mi niña amarga?
¡Cuántas veces te esperó!
¡Cuántas veces te esperara,
cara fresca, negro pelo,
en esta verde baranda!
*
Sobre el rostro del aljibe
se mecía la gitana.
Verde carne, pelo verde,
con ojos de fría plata.
Un carámbano de luna
la sostiene sobre el agua.
La noche su puso íntima

como una pequeña plaza.
Guardias civiles borrachos,
en la puerta golpeaban.
Verde que te quiero verde.
Verde viento. Verdes ramas.
El barco sobre la mar.
Y el caballo en la montaña

Federico Garcia Lorca*

Lyrical, Passionate, Elemental
I saw BLOOD WEDDING and THE HOUSE OF BERNARDA ALBA on television during the '50s or '60s.I loved them so much, I got the books out of the library read and re-read them during high school.

Garcia Lorca is a master of language and poetry.His plays and poems are romantic, lyrical, and passionate.

THE HOUSE OF BERNARDA ALBA, BLOOD WEDDING, AND YERMA center on the urgent sexuality of women and the rage and pain that come when that sexuality is denied or thwarted.Lorca's plays are not pornographic or sexually explicit--rather they deal with drives, yearnings, impulses that inevitably flower, and how different characters in the play are affected by social pressures that allow--or restrain--her from expressing these ancient needs.

One reviewer included a quote in his review, and so will I--this poem will perhaps give the reader a sense of his style:

The Gypsy and the Wind

Playing her parchment moon
Precosia comes
along a watery path of laurels and crystal lights.
The starless silence, fleeing
from her rhythmic tambourine,
falls where the sea whips and sings,
his night filled with silvery swarms.
High atop the mountain peaks
the sentinels are weeping;
they guard the tall white towers
of the English consulate.
And gypsies of the water
for their pleasure erect
little castles of conch shells
and arbors of greening pine.

Playing her parchment moon
Precosia comes.
The wind sees her and rises,
the wind that never slumbers.
Naked Saint Christopher swells,
watching the girl as he plays
with tongues of celestial bells
on an invisible bagpipe.

Gypsy, let me lift your skirt
and have a look at you.
Open in my ancient fingers
the blue rose of your womb.

Precosia throws the tambourine
and runs away in terror.
But the virile wind pursues her
with his breathingand burning sword.

The sea darkens and roars,
while the olive trees turn pale.
The flutes of darkness sound,
and a muted gong of the snow.

Precosia, run, Precosia!
Or the green wind will catch you!
Precosia, run, Precosia!
And look how fast he comes!
A satyr of low-born stars
with their long and glistening tongues.

Precosia, filled with fear,
now makes her way to that house
beyond the tall green pines
where the English consul lives.

Alarmed by the anguished cries,
three riflemen come running,
their black capes tightly drawn,
and berets down over their brow.

The Englishman gives the gypsy
a glass of tepid milk
and a shot of Holland gin
which Precosia does not drink.

And while she tells them, weeping,
of her strange adventure,
the wind furiously gnashes
against the slate roof tiles.

Now imagine these words in Spanish!

read and buy this book!!
garcia lorca is simply a person who must be read.

And where has gone the Argentine "Valsa de Requerda??"" Where?

Spain not Peru
The trilogy by FGL, Yerma, Blood Wedding and The House of Bernarda Alba is set in Spain not Peru.They are an excellent portrayal of life in rural Spain during those times.A must read for anyone, but especially those who are studying Spanish literature.Allthough most widely known as a poet, FGL displays his talent for drama with these plays.

Simply brilliant
Lorca uses simple mathematical expressions to convey emotions.A colour, for example white, combined with an object, for example a baby in the opening sequence of Yerma, will add up to a symbolic meaning where eithertwo factors can be used somewhere else.Basically, anything white is adream of happiness which is destroyed by an event.This very basic set ofsymbols and the application of "equations" makes Lorca one of themost powerful and accessible writers i've come accross.Oh and the storiesare good too (!) ... Read more

Book Description

The magic of Andalusia is crystallized in Federico Garcia Lorca's first major work, Poem of the Deep Song, written in 1921 when the poet was twenty-three years old, and published a decade later. In this group of poems, based on saetas, soleares, and siguiriyas, Lorca captures the passionate flamenco cosmos of Andalusia's Gypsies, ""those mysterious wandering folk who gave deep song its definitive form.

Cante jondo, deep song, comes from a musical tradition that developed among peoples who fled into the mountains in the 15th century to escape the Spanish Inquisition. With roots in Arabic instruments, Sephardic ritual, Byzantine liturgy, native folk songs, and, above all, the rhythms of Gypsy life, deep song is characterized by intense and profound emotion.

Fearing that the priceless heritage of deep song might vanish from Spain, Lorca, along with Manuel de Falla and other young artists, hoped to preserve ""the artistic treasure of an entire race."" In Poem of the Deep Song, the poet's own lyric genius gives cante jondo a special kind of immortality.

Carlos Baur is the translator of Garcia Lorca's The Public and Play Without a Title: Two Posthumous Plays, and of Cries from a Wounded Madrid: Poetry of the Spanish Civil War. He has also translated the work of Henry Miller and other contemporary American writers into Spanish.

Customer Reviews (1)

What? No one has reviewed this delightful book?
Lorca has written both an essay on Deep Song and a book of Deep Songpoetry - they should be read together.

While Lorca, Falla and others'theory of the origin of Deep Song in the gypsy tradition is now discounted,the sensitivity Lorca shows in trying to retain a traditional form iswonderful. [Current theory gives more influence to the original Andalusian,Saracen, and Shephardic influences which had already developed into DeepSong when the gypsies arrived].

In fact, one should also read someArab-Andulsian poetry along with Deep Song.The poems of Deep Song are notLorca's best but they are important for understanding Lorca's culturalsensibilities.The use of refrains, the use of a varient of the openingstanza as a closing stanza etc. are techniques that are clearly in thehands of a master although the poems were written early in hiscareer.

Now, if I could only find out the meaning of certain repeatingimages such as yellow serpent. ... Read more

Book Description
essays & poetry (bilingual), ed Christopher Maurer ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Duende
This is the one book which I believe all artists should read - I have the challenge of teaching my classmates to understand how to find Duende soon so I know this is a great resource.

A masterpiece
Lorca's essay, "the Play and Theory of the Duende", should be required reading for artists in any field. A life-changing concept, rendered beautifully in poetic prose.

informative and proud
did you find your duende ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Passionate Wedding
Blood Wedding by Lorca is an excellent book, full of excellent imagery and real images that leap out at you. The storyline holds your attention and keeps it till you finish it. The story is told in a beautiful, moving way and haunts you long after you finish reading the book. ... Read more

Book Description
Spain, tr Robin Skelton ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

The best biography of a Spanish poet
Federico Garcia Lorca is one of the best poets in history of Spanish literature. In a country where is very difficult to find a tradition ofinvestigations about our recently literature, Ian Gibson's book is a masterpiece.

Incredibly well researched.
One of the best biographies I've read. This book is a well written account based on much research that is finely pieced together.

Gibson tells you about Lorca and all that surrounded him.
Lorca's life, and fate, other than some superficial items, were for the most part hidden from public awareness for many decades. He was in many ways a victim, but mostly from politicians, because they killed him.

Theexcesses of the Reds were countered by the excesses of the Blues(phalangists, rightists, fascists) in a dictatorship that outdid themurders of all predecessors. Politicians sometimes destroy something inorder to "save" it. His threat was his speech, and 1998, the yearof his centennial, the centennial of Spain's great gift to us for producingso many super-writers ("the generation of 98"), was the year inwhich we were reminded that the struggle against oppression never ends.

Gibson tells us the story of Lorca but not only about him. If hementions Granada, Andalucia, the Gypsies, the Moors, Falla, the SpanishCivil War, etc, he will ALSO tell you about that! In this book you willgrasp the meaning of surrealism, its evolution, Lorca's surrealism, andparticularly the surrealism of Dali and Buñuel.

This book is a must forthe literary avid, the poetry fan, the history bum, the political student,and importantly, for those of us that will benefit from learning that whathappened in Spain may also happen in our own countries.

a complete view of Garcia Lorca's life
I am an architecture student at Tulane University, and I am very interested in the way Garcia Lorca percieved and described the notion of place and space. Most likely I willdo my Architecture Thesis about Garcia Lorca and his sensibility and perceptions on events,and place and Iann Gibson's book, "Federico Garcia Lorca: A Life", is the first biography about Lorca that I have read, and I find it very comprehensive and acsessible. I also believe that the translation to English is done with great sensibility. In addition I would like to know if there are other books about Lorca that are more related to my topic? ... Read more

Book Description
This collection brings together new original English-languagetranslations of frederico Garcia Lorca's so-called "impossible" plays, aswell as new translations of thirteen of his most recognized poems from hisPoet in new York cycle. Along with translations are essays on Lorca's workby some of his most prominent Lorca scholars currently working today, andcover art and dramaturgical notes by esteemed Catalan painter, scenicdesigner, and filmmaker Frederic Amat. This volume seeks to recontextualizeLorca's experimental work for a new audience now that 100 years have passedsince the poet's birth, and allows directors, actors, and academics torediscover the lesser-known plays of Lorca's commedia-influenced period asas reaquaint themselves with his little-performed classic As Five YearsPass. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

Of the best selections of Lorca's poems
This series of lyrical poems are full of imagination, sensitivity and pictures, though Lorca's loneliness and depression comes through as well:

"Narciso.
Mi dolor.
Y mi dolor mismo."

This is not Lorca!
I have read many different books of Lorca's poetry, and I think thetranslation for this book is really poor. It is not keeping with Lorca's real poetry. Try his collected poems or A Season in Granada. Those truly keep with the beauty of his writing. Skip this book!

More Duende, Please
If you love Lorca, you'll appreciate this book. Lorca is the master of Duende, but he does it in such an artful way that you don't feel all gloomy. In fact, by underscoring the shadow of death, Lorca shows us the beauty in life. If you read this book, you're sure to enjoy the lyrical mastery of one of Spain's greatest poets.

wonderfully lyrical and romantic
These wonderfully lyrical and romantic poems span from 1921 to 1936, the year of his untimely execution. This edition include both the original Spanish and English translations (including a translation by Langston Hughes).

I particular like some of the sounds "Poem of the Saeta" "They come from remote regions of sorrow". His trip to New York, produced the notable "King of Harlem" and "Ode to Walt Whitman". The final series of poems on "Gacela of .." and "Casida of the .." only hint at the themes he may have developed later in his life.

brilliant, forbidding, and intense
This volume is bilingual and in this case the English translations can hold their own against the Spanish (and Galician) originals.It culls poems from every period in the poet's life, thereby giving the reader a huge range of Garcia Lorca's work - from the talking lizards to the masterpiece "Poet in New York" to traditional gacelas.

While some of the poems seem superficial, others are loaded with meaning.Some critics have said that Lorca's preoccupation with death seemed to foreshadow his own, which came in the midst of the Spanish Civil War.Indeed, many of these poems have dark overtones.Lorca never loses the passion and intensity, however.His love poems are majestic in their images and emotion, which are surprisingly undimmed in translation.

In particular, Lorca's language - especially his metaphors and similes - are unusual and striking.His imagery conjures up fantastical scenes; maybe one could say he writes the way that Salvador Dali painted.If you're looking for an introduction to Lorca (or if you're approaching him with some trepidation), then I'd suggest this book.It will give you a good feel for his development as a poet as well as his overal style. ... Read more

Book Description

In a remote Spanish village, Yerma longs for a child but is unable to conceive. This compelling and elemental tale of a woman's quest for a child taps into some of theatre's most universal themes-love, passion, sexuality, marriage. In this new translation, Pam Gems has stripped the text to the poetic core of Lorca's words in all their epic glory.

Customer Reviews (4)

Yerma
When reading Lorca's plays you have to remember that they are in fact Plays and are not meant to be read but to be preformed. They weren't created to specifically entertain but were supposed to be a photographic representation of life in rural spain during the 1930's. Yerma is a story about a woman pressured by societal expectations to have children. When she finds out that she can not conceive (Yerma in spanish literally means desert, she is barren) it drives her into depression. Its a story about the unrealistic pressures and expectations of society on women during her time. The beauty in Lorca's work is in his use of symbolism and repetition. Its not a play to read for pleasure but rather education.

A woman's pain
"Yerma," the play by Federico Garcia Lorca, has been adapted by Pam Gems in the version I read.Gems also wrote the introduction to the book, in which she praises Lorca as one of Spain's greatest artists of all time.A note before the beginning of the play notes that this adaptation was first presented in Manchester in 2003.

The title character of Yerma is a rural wife who is frustrated because she has not yet given birth to a child.The play follows her conflict with her husband and interactions with other characters."Yerma" certainly raises some important issues: marriage, gender roles, motherhood, trust, and honor.And there is some wonderfully poetic language.But overall I found this play dull and uninteresting; moreover, the characters never really engaged me.For better examples of Gems' talent, I suggest the fine plays "Marlene" and "The Snow Palace."

Yerma, my thoughts
yerma is a book with a lot going for it from a literary point of view, but is difficult to read as anon-native speaker.

Asi Asi
Esa obra no es el mejor de Lorca.La Casa de Bernarda Alba es el mejor. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

engaging love story
The characters' emotions are so accurately portrayed, emboding the traditional themes of Lorca, that the characters come alive in the scenes. However, the beginning and ending of the play, the struggles between theman and the wife, also portray human nature and the futility of perfectlove as Lorca sees it. Good reading, real story. ... Read more